Process Management In Operating System: Introduction, Importance & Key Functions Explained

Process management in operating system goes a long way in building a scalable system. In a system, running single tasked processes or batch processing is easier and effective but as today’s systems and workings require the operating system to be able to manage multitasking and programming at a time, the operating system requires it to be stable and optimised.

Process management ensures that all processes running in the system runs and utilised in an effective manner. In this article, let us get proper insights around process management in operating systems.

Table of Contents

Process Management In Operating System Introduction

Process Management in operating system is an important process in the operating system which ensures that every process runs efficiently and smoothly within an organisation or system. Process management plays a very big role in ensuring that the overall system is stable and running in an optimised manner. It schedules and ensures that every process runs according to their designated time and method.

Process Management Key Takeaways

Process management handles tasks like scheduling, deadlock handling, termination, running and creation of processes.
Process is a running program in action which is used to execute a particular task.
Process management ensures efficient CPU scheduling, handles process crashes, load balancing and ensures the system is responsive throughout the running period.

Components of Process Management In Operating System

The process management in operating system consists of a variety of elements inside which helps them in creating, managing, scheduling, and termination of processes while ensuring that every process is allocated and the CPU idle time is as minimum as possible.

Process management consists of memory management information which include information of page table, memory limitation, segment table, and more.
It also consists of the CPU Scheduling information with information like priority schedules, scheduling information, duration, queues, and more.
A Process Control Block is used to store information about all major things of a process such as I/O status, process ID, program counter, state, and more.
A Process management scheduler also maintains information about the I/O status of the devices attached to the system and used by the processes.
Process management stores information about Process iD, Process execution details, process synchronisation, file management, network management and more information.

Roles & Responsibilities of Process Management

Process management plays a significant role in operating systems right from the creation of processes to their termination. Let us get an overview of the roles process management plays.

Process management in operating system is responsible for creating and terminating a process when users of the system need it. It assigns a unique PID (process IDs) to each process and terminates the process when execution completes.
Process scheduling is also implemented within process management where it implements various scheduling algorithms to run processes in the system.
It manages the process states such as ready, running, waiting, and termination. It creates new processes and ensures that PCB regulates information and context switches work properly in the system.
It allocates CPU time, memory, and I/O resources to the processes in the operating system and prevents any conflicts and promotes optimal utilisation.
It handles coordination between multiple processes and avoids any conflicts by using proper mechanisms like mutex, semaphores, and others.
It allows processes to communicate with each other and share data with proper mechanisms to avoid conflicts and ensure efficient communication.
It also detects any cases of deadlock in the system and implements deadlock prevention strategies to recover from deadlock when they occur.
It can run multiple processes and ensure proper CPU time sharing in the system during multitasking.
It implements process isolation to prevent one process from interfering from another during the running state.

Working of Process Management In Operating System

Process management starts from the beginning and monitors every process that runs and terminates in the operating system. Let us have a look around in the process management operation.

Process Creation

A new process is created after overall inspection and when the process ensures that there are available spaces in the operating system memory. The new process is an instance of a program which can execute a task independently.

Process Scheduling

The Process scheduling algorithm ensures that the process is scheduled based on different criterias such as their arrival time, burst time, completion time, and more. A new process enters into the ready state and runs as per their scheduled time.

Process Execution

The process execution in the process management life cycle take place when the process goes to the active state and starts executing its tasks where it can also move to the waiting queue if needed to perform an I/O operation or interrupted by a more priority process which needs the CPU.

Process Termination

A process gets killed or terminated when it completes its assigned tasks or suffers from an error during its execution. Process when completed, is removed from its Process Control Block (PCB).

Context Switching in Operating System

Context Switching is a process of switching processes based on their priority and scheduling algorithm. Basically the state of the process is saved so that it can be restored at a later point. It can be used to allow multiple processes to use a single CPU ensuring that there is no idle time for the CPU.

A context switch normally happens in these few conditions in the operating system.

When a more priority process is in the ready state and wants to start its execution.
When a process is moving to execute an I/O task in the system.
When an interrupt occurs it can also trigger a context switch in the process management.
During the switching of user and kernel mode in CPU.
Preemptive scheduling algorithm generally triggers a context switch in the operating system.

Context Switching plays a major role in making the process management more effective and optimised.

Benefits of Process Management In Operating System

Process management has made multi programming more easier and effective. There are many different benefits of process management mentioned below.

It promotes effective CPU utilisation and ensures that the time distribution among processes are well optimised.
Process management implements scheduling algorithms to ensure that CPUs do not have an ideal time.
It enables multi processes to run simultaneously and enables time sharing between processes without any conflicts.
It detects deadlock and also improves system responsiveness by running processes in the background.
Process management in operating system allocates memory, I/O Devices, CPU efficiently and reduces wastage of system resources and prevents resource starvation.
It enables smooth data exchange between processes using shared memory, message queues, pipes and more efficient techniques.
It detects and handles any process crashes ensuring that it does not affect the system.
It ensures that every process runs on its own and does not interfere with each other which means one process will not have any effect on the other processes if not connected.
It handles context switching smoothly and ensures that all states are executed effectively without major delays.

Challenges of Process Management In Operating System

Process management is very effective in managing system resources but it also suffers from major challenges and drawbacks which affect operating systems.

Process management uses system resources which become an overhead as it uses system memory and resources to track, monitor, and schedule processes.
It is generally tough to design an effective process management scheduler which can handle every process issue. The algorithms and resources allocation methods are complex in an operating system.
Process management in operating system uses semaphores and mutex locks which can lead to deadlocks where processes get stuck for an indefinite period of time.
Making sure that every process gets a fair amount of process becomes a burden due to a limited amount of memory spaces.
When multiple processes access shared resources it may lead to conflicts which cannot be handled in absence of a clearly defined algorithm.
Inefficient isolation of processes can lead to unauthorised access and vulnerabilities in the system.
Sometimes for process management it becomes difficult to handle input output bottlenecks which might slow down the system.

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Process Management In Operating System FAQs

Q1. What is Process Management?

Ans: Process Management is an important process in the operating system which ensures that every process runs efficiently and smoothly within an organisation or system.

Q2. What is the working of process management in operating system?

Ans: A process management in an operating system creates processes, schedules them, executes them and terminates them when completed. It also ensures there are no conflicts and stability of the entire system.